I hope to be entering the teaching world of ESL in Taipei very soon (still sorting out the JFRV thing). I came across a movie today on TV. It was one of those underdog teacher movies where the new teacher faces a classroom of hoodlums and unlocks their inner geniuses by the end of the film. This movie was based off a real teacher and his book: The Essential 55.
I have not read this book yet, but am intrigued by it. Have any of you read it? What sort of rules or guidelines would you say sets the stage for a productive learning environment for Elementary and Junior High students?
Obviously teaching methods that were designed for inner city kids in the US would have to be adjusted and adapted for students here in Taiwan. I have seen and heard the expectations for foreign ESL teachers here. My impressions range from being the equivalent of a circus entertainer where no actual teaching is expected, to hard core lesson planning and lecturing. Regardless if you are expected to be a clown or educator, it is still imperative that a good educator masters classroom management.
My goal, besides having a steady income, is to actually educate and inspire whatever kids I teach. I don’t want to spend the majority of my classroom time disciplining or doing damage control. I have heard a lot of classroom nightmare stories and I want to be prepared. If you could make a list of the top 5 essential rules for effective classroom management what would they be?
I think it’s a great book. Not all of it is applicable in an EFL classroom, but much of it is. You cannot have a successful class without good classroom management, and Ron Clark provides some nice ideas.
I spend very little time disciplining my students, they are incredibly hard working and well behaved. Don’t worry about classroom insanity, it’s very rare here.
I should qualify my comments by saying I have encountered very few problems and have known of very few amongst my friends who teach here. Perhaps I have been lucky, but I think Taiwanese kids are wonderful students.
If I were you, I would hone my sense of humor. The most successful teachers here are the ones who can interject a good bit of silliness while getting the job done at the same time. These kids work their arses off and a little levity goes a long way.
Good luck with that - their entire life up until this point has been spent learning how to never be inspired by anything, and to view education as a grindstone they must go through rather than anything beneficial to them.
You can show them something different, but it takes a very long time and 90% of them will never get it anyway.
I have read the 55 and the 11 and apply some to both my students and to my teaching, but I was already applying some of them before reading the book. I have been lucky in my 6 school years in Taiwan to have fairly open-minded parents. There are always exceptions, the parents who feel they are doing me some great favor by giving license to punish their children when I call them because their child is not studying and doing their homework at home or to push them harder and give them more homework because they are not motivated enough to want to learn English. I have to tell these parents that I appreciate their advice and I’ll think about it (my 5th graders already know that “I’ll think about it” is my nice way of saying “no” without out right saying “no”) when I work with their child.
Some are a little O/C like the handwashing thing. I’m happy if they use soap and aren’t dripping water when they come back from the sink, forget about his little ritual for never coming into contact with faucet or doors after washing one’s hands. Yeah, there are places where you want to do something like that, but holy shit Ron Clark needs to get exposed to a few germs and get over his fixation.
The book of Essential 11 (can’t remember the exact title) is mostly anecdotal about his students, but they are great to remember or to at least keep in the back of your mind when teaching. If you want something a little more practical and realistic for the Taiwan ESL scene, however, I cannot recommend the Positive Discipline books by Jane Nelsen, Ed.D, et al and The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong enough. They are not completely applicable to the buxiban style of doing things, especially if you are working for a cookie-cutter buxiban like Joy or Giraffe where the entire lesson plan is laid out for you with little leeway to do anything else, but you can still use the ideas in your classroom… one of the most important ones being - have the classroom planned from the moment the students enter to the moment when the last one leaves.
Clark’s books are pretty good, but I wouldn’t base my entire classroom management plan on them. Especially since that’s not what they are for.